Hope There's Someone
by viceroy12
Summary: (Paradox Ending: The Future Is Hope) When Snow arrives in Academia 4XX AF just in time to stop Alyssa from springing Caius's trap, he tells Hope that he must thwart his own assassination-and that Serah's former guardian Noel must help. With the future suddenly resting in hands more accustomed now to computer terminals than weapons, can Hope survive long enough to save the world?
1. Chapter 1: Protector

**Chapter One: Protector  
**

 _You're going to be assassinated exactly three days from now._

The words wouldn't leave Hope's mind as he watched Snow's motorcycle wink out of existence.

He'd faced death before, of course. Many times. But then . . . he'd been a l'Cie. With powers. Ways to fight back, to heal, and even bring back mortally wounded friends from the brink.

This was different.

 _You're going to be assassinated exactly three days from now._

So much had changed in the last hour. Alyssa arrested as a traitor, the revelation that Caius was stalking the timeline and undoing the work Noel and Serah had done, Snow's return on his ridiculous Shiva motorcycle, Serah's leaving. . . . Hope turned to look at Noel, who was staring up at the sky with a thin-lipped expression on his face. "Gone, just like that," he muttered to himself.

"Snow's always been like that," Hope said, trying to fight through the heaviness of fear in his body. It had been a long time, he reflected, since he had felt such oppressive dread.

"Snow?" Noel looked over at Hope. "I meant Serah. I'm supposed to protect _her_. Now I'm supposed to stop protecting her to save you just on his say-so?" A pause. "Er, no offense, of course. You just always seem like you could protect yourself."

"Usually, yes." _You're going to be assassinated—_ Hope rubbed his arms, which had broken out in sudden goosebumps under his Academy uniform. The sky felt too big suddenly, the buildings that had moments ago been this new and strange home now a threatening warren of steel and mirrors hiding unseen threats.

Hope jumped as racing footsteps echoed off the buildings. "Director!" He whirled, hand unconsciously going to his boomerang. Some days he forgot it on his short ride from his quarters high atop the Academy headquarters to the labs. He didn't think he'd be forgetting it much anymore. A squadron of soldiers pulled up short in front of him, saluting. Hope recognized the captain insignia on the leader's shoulder, if not his face behind the impersonal mask. Too much he couldn't see. "Director. Sir, it's Alyssa . . . you should come right away."

Noel held up his hand. "She's not important. He is. Hope is going to be assassinated in three days unless you keep him under guard at all times."

The Academy captain turned to Hope. "Director, is this true?"

"I'm afraid it is," Hope said, turning away from the open sky and heading for the safety of the Academy headquarters. At least he hoped it was safe. He needed to survive long enough to ensure that the new Cocoon would rise in a hundred years. Snow's other parting words made him glance up at the half-constructed dome looming like a felled crescent moon over the capitol. _Without you . . . we might as well forget about having any kind of future._ "Come, I'll explain on the way."

"Why did you do it, Alyssa?"

She looked up at him mutely from where she hunched, stripped of her Academy garb and forlorn behind the safety glass. They'd bandaged her neck and chest where she had tried to stab herself. A shock of red bloomed against the white of the gauze, the prison garb, the cell.

"I don't understand. I need to understand, Alyssa. Why did you do this to them? After four hundred years of work, why throw it all away like this?"

Hope had never seen her break down. Not during the long sleepless nights in front of computer terminals, not during the day they decided to step into the gravity well and burn irrevocably forward four hundred years into the future. He had never seen her shudder and gasp so, wiping at her nose and eyes with her sleeves. "You would have done the same thing," she choked out through her sobs. "You _did_ do the same thing."

Hope shook his head, adamant. "No. You're wrong, Alyssa. I would never betray my friends." _A young boy, hate bright in his green eyes, knife held high as the one he so hated, the one who had protected him, dangled from a ledge—_ no. With a sigh, Hope slumped, back against the glass. "Alyssa, talk to me. After all we've been through together . . . please, just talk to me."

Alyssa was calmer now, her sobs even and controlled. She leaned against the glass, close to him. It made him uncomfortable somehow, but he didn't move for fear that she'd lose her tenuous grip on herself again. "If they do what they want to, Hope, I will be no more."

"What? What do you mean?" He turned to face her, pressing his hands to the glass. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"When Cocoon fell, I . . . " Alyssa took a shuddering breath, then started over. "I was in Bodhum during the Purge."

The Purge. Those two words were enough. As she spoke, Hope could see that day looming like the broken shell of Cocoon in his memory. Was it five hundred years ago? For him, it was less than a decade. It still felt like yesterday. He could remember her face so well, though she died half a millennium ago.

"I remember when the soldiers came in. We ran and hid."

— _when she took the gun I was too afraid to go with her, I was so soft and coddled, just like everyone else, fat and happy lambs for the slaughter—_

"But there was an explosion; I remember being thrown against the wall and seeing the sudden brightness of the sky or searchlights—"

— _but she was brave, she had gone to fight and gone to die for me—_

"Then something happened. I think . . . I think the wall caved in, or the ceiling, something crushed into me . . . I don't know what it was, but I know . . . "

— _and I did nothing—_

" . . . I know I—I died."

The silence spun out, long and fragile, interrupted only by Alyssa's quiet sobs. Hope put a hand to his face, roughly wiped at his eyes. "Maybe you're wrong," he said lamely. He knew she wasn't. "Maybe you were knocked out and you came to later on."

"No!" Alyssa pounded on the safety glass. "Hope, listen to me! I _died!_ The second they resolve the paradox, _my_ paradox, I'll be gone, and more than gone—you won't remember me, no one will remember me, and everything I've done, all of this I helped build—it'll go on never knowing me." She turned away from Hope then. "Go."

"What?"

"Go. Just go away. Leave me. I don't care what you do to me. Nothing you can do is worse than what's going to happen anyway. I'll just wait here until . . . until there's no more waiting to do."

"Wait, Alyssa, please—"

" _Go!"_ she was screaming now. "Go go go away!"

Guards burst through the door to the hallway, batons drawn. "Director!"

"No! No, I'm fine." Hope waved them down. Inside the cell, he saw doctors rushing in, injecting Alyssa in the arm with a sedative; she sagged in their arms and Hope shuddered as he realized her helpless descent into unconsciousness was not unlike what she would one day experience when Serah and Snow resolved the paradox that allowed her to live.

The doctors laid Alyssa down on a gurney and strapped her in place. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks tear-streaked. There were no words, nothing left to do. Hope let himself out.


	2. Chapter 2: Kindred

**Chapter Two: Kindred**

Noel was waiting for him in the hallway. Hope composed himself. He was always cognizant of the disconnect between his position and his youth; he never let the latter show through. "Have you been here this whole time?"

"I'm your protector now," Noel said simply, pushing off the wall. He moved with the limber grace of a predator. Even after all he'd been through, Hope knew he'd never managed that casual, deadly fluidity of movement. He had always overintellectualized, always let his mind get in the way of the sheer kineticism of battle. Oh, he'd been alright at it, to be sure, but it was never with that symphony of muscles that Lightning and Fang and Noel innately understood.

Hope realized he was staring. "Ah—right. Thanks." He didn't point out that he had a thousand soldiers within com's reach. "But you can't just stay glued to my side for the next seventy-two hours, you know."

"And why not?" Noel half-playfully hip-checked Hope, who bit back a yelp as he stumbled slightly. When was the last time anyone besides Alyssa had joked with him?

"Well, for one, I'm very boring," Hope replied, then realized his answer was too serious-sounding. Maybe no one joked with him because he had forgotten how to joke. When had he become so grave?

"Saving the world is hardly boring," Noel said.

"Yeah, well, I'll leave that to you and Serah," Hope replied.

"I'm not the one Snow said would save the future." Noel put a finger to Hope's chest. "That was you." He spun and walked down the hall ahead of Hope. "So what's the plan, Director?" he called back, throwing his arms wide. "We've got to keep you alive in three days' time so you can finish building this new Cocoon of yours and get it up. I'm sure you've got it all worked out."

Hope caught up to Noel. What was his plan? "Well, the first thing is to find out who and why now," he said, thinking aloud. "Alyssa and I were in the gravity well for four hundred years. Why didn't someone try to take us out then? It would have been easy enough, however well-guarded we were."

"You weren't much of a threat until you woke up," Noel said. "The question is: a threat to whom?"

"Caius, for starters."

"Right. But he could have come after you at any point."

"Not if it was necessary that I make it this far—but no further," Hope said grimly. He had no great illusions that he could have survived so long unless Caius intended him to.

"Perhaps," said Noel. "But in alternate timelines, you _did_ die. Adam killed you. Until we killed Adam, and you decided not to create it in the first place."

"Right." Hope marveled again at how close he had come not only to being gunned down by his own creation, but at how close he had come to perpetuating the cycle of human subjugation to the fal'Cie. The Academy trusted him, but he didn't quite trust himself. But then, that was exactly why they put their faith in him. "So perhaps in other timelines, I had done what I needed to do in creating Adam, and I was expendable. That would mean that, if Caius is behind this, I haven't done what I need to do. Which makes sense," he said suddenly, whirling to face Noel. "The dedication ceremony of the new Cocoon is in three days; they're expecting me to make a big speech from the balcony of headquarters here. What better time to assassinate the Director of the Academy than while in mid-speech?"

Noel slapped his fist into his open palm. "So you don't give the speech and we keep you safe and that's it! Problem solved."

Hope shook his head. "It's not that simple. We _have_ to do the dedication. In a hundred years, we'll need to load the entire world onto the new Cocoon. If we don't start working now to convince everyone that it's what must be done, it'll be impossible to save everyone."

"So maybe you don't save everyone."

"No! We're going to save every last one of them. No one gets left behind. Not this time." Too emphatic. Hope unclenched his fists. "If it's my life or, in a hundred years, the lives of thousands, I'd rather give mine to save theirs. I made that promise to myself a long time ago, Noel. I won't go back on it now." Noel just nodded. Of course he'd understand; he'd come from a future where Hope had failed. Noel knew better than anyone ever could what the cost of that failure would be.

"The other obvious question is: why can't I just heal you, or bring you back if you're assassinated? I mean, I'm not particularly good with healing magic—that's Serah's specialty, not mine—but there's no reason—"

"It doesn't work like that for me anymore." He rubbed his wrist, a habit he'd developed. "Not since I stopped being a l'Cie. Being a l'Cie is a curse, of course. But in some ways, it is a perverse gift: you are given great strength to do what the fal'Cie command. Healing doesn't work as well on me anymore, not since I lost my brand and my Focus."

"Then why does it work on me?"

"I can't be entirely sure," Hope said. Guards opened the massive steel doors that led into Hope's lab. "I suspect it has to do with the fact that, though you are not l'Cie, you are similarly . . . chosen. Serah too. But it could also be the slow change that has spread through humanity since we returned to Gran Pulse—magic is spreading once again, even if I no longer have the gift." He sighed. "Regardless, it means healing is less useful than science and surgery for someone like me. So there's no using magic to bring me back from the brink," he added, thinking of the times Vanille or Lightning or any of the others, really, had rescued him, bringing him back to continue to carry out their Focus.

"Well, we'll just have to make sure nothing happens to you in the first place."

Hope nodded vaguely; they both knew that for all Noel's bravado, that wasn't much of a plan, and Hope's life depended on them getting it right. He led his new protector into the lab, where a giant projection of the new Cocoon floated in glowing monochrome. He did his best thinking in here. "We haven't actually answered anything," he said, breaking the silence. "It might be Caius. It might be a lone actor. It might be another dissident group like the one that Blitz Squad broke up in 9AF. And even if we know who and the likely when, we don't know how. Or why. But if we know why, then we can figure out whom."

"So how do we start looking?" Noel was ever the pragmatist. It was so easy to run headlong down his warren of thoughts all leading like roots farther and farther down; leave it to Noel to cut right through to the thing that needed doing. If he had to face down his own death, he could do worse than have Noel at his side.

"My advisers bring me daily updates. Since waking up here a few months ago, I've set up systems to bring me up to speed on the changes that have taken place over the last several hundred years." He relied on those advisers more than he cared to admit, however, and knew that if would-be assassins had managed to turn one or more of his advisers to their side, he would be none the wiser until it was too late. In fact, they had become, aside from Alyssa, his main point of contact with the outside world. He spent so much time holed up in his lab, orchestrating the new Cocoon's building and levitation, that time passed him by as surely as if he still remained in his gravity well. For all their closeness in their early years, he and Alyssa had stopped spending time outside of work together. His food was delivered and taken away for him by unseen devices; he ate either here or in his spartan chambers, poring over reports or formulae or schematics. He exercised in the gym in his quarters; robotic voices informed him when he had hit peak performance and when to begin cool-down. He slept alone in a too-big, too-white bed. Hope pulled the holoscreens up in front of him; the computer screens bathed his face in their familiar pale glow. Almost all of his life was spent in front of screens like this. He couldn't remember the last time he'd just had a normal conversation that didn't involve work or the exchange of vital information. "I'm a person out of time," he murmured to himself.

"What are you talking about? We have three days," Noel said, and Hope started slightly. He had half-forgotten the other was there.

"No, no, not that," Hope said, shaking his head. He turned to face Noel. "I . . . never mind."

"You mean you don't belong here."

Hope just nodded, not trusting himself to speak for a moment.

"You don't know if you belong anywhere."

He looked away from blue eyes suddenly so understanding, so close.

"Why did you leave?"

"I have work to do." It came out more harshly than he intended as he stared at the pale holoscreen. It had gone blank, a pale white light like the inside of the gravity well, like the blinding nothing of crystal stasis, of eternity.

"You could have left notes, you know."

"I didn't have anything left. Everyone I've ever loved . . . they were gone. My mother. Fang and Vanille. Lightning. My father. He died of a heart attack at his desk." Hope gestured at the vaulted ceiling over a hundred feet above them. "He founded this Academy, you know. It is the life work of the Estheims, I guess. There was nothing for me there, nothing to do but to find my way here, to finish this off. Alyssa told me once that I was working so hard to save humanity that I was sacrificing my own." He laughed. It was a dry, bitter thing. "And that was _before_ we decided to seal ourselves away and wait until this time."

Noel's hand twitched like he wanted to reach out—it was a gesture so fleeting Hope barely caught it—but he didn't. Instead, he said, "Where I come from, I was the last one left. The few villagers left in our hovels withered and died before my eyes until there were only the three of us left—and I saw one of them die and the other leave, blind with rage and sadness. It was . . . unimaginably lonely." He stared for a moment at the glowing Cocoon hologram, his face awash in the unearthly green light. Cocoon was Hope's everything. He couldn't even imagine what it would be like in Noel's world, a time where Cocoon was gone. "Death seemed the best option, so I walked. I walked and walked, eating nothing, drinking nothing, until Etro came for me."

"What I've gone through doesn't really begin to compare," Hope said. His loneliness had been one born of choice and duty. Noel had been given no choice—only duty.

"I'm sorry," Noel replied. "I didn't mean it like that. I meant that I understand." Hope found himself transfixed by the look on Noel's face. Gone for a moment was the tenacity, the determination the other wore like armor. In its place was a sudden vulnerability, a widening of eyes continually sharp for predator or prey, and Hope could not help but remember how young Noel was—several years Hope's junior, even if the two seemed of an age. In a more peaceful time, they could have been friends.

Well, if there would not be time for peace, then perhaps he would just have to find what peace he could in the time he had.

Stepping forward, he put his hand on Noel's upper arm. "Come with me. I want to show you something."


	3. Chapter 3: Confidant

The wind was a terrible living thing raking the roof of the Academy headquarters. From up here, though, you could see all of Academia, the sprawling metropolis a testament to everything that humanity had become. They had tamed Gran Pulse, this vast land of myth and monster, forcing it to accept once more the great weight of humanity which had once floated fearful above this place.

Hope came up here sometimes when he needed to remind himself, when he needed to feel the danger of the frantic scrabbling wind tearing at him, ready to cast him down upon the towers below. There was a certain sense of deathlessness in this measured allegro through time. Not immortality. Just a sense that you could twist and dodge and evade Etro's grasp. Hubris. Could he sleep far enough to escape time entirely? Humility is a necessary trait in a scientist, and even more so for the Academy's Director. Being here in this high place brought him low again.

"That's Titan," he yelled, pointing toward the horizon and leaning in close to Noel's ear. "The second-largest of the fal'Cie."

"Etro's blood!" Noel yelled back. "If he's the _second_ -biggest . . . "

Hope laughed, but the wind took it spinning off the edge. "You've already seen the largest. Fenrir. He blocked out the moon in 10AF—remember?"

Noel rounded on Hope. "Hope. The Cocoon fal'Cie that made you a l'Cie—they all followed Barthandelus, right?"

"And Orphan, in a manner of speaking, but yes. Why?"

"Who do the Pulse fal'Cie follow?"

"They seem to follow their directives as assigned by Pulse, as far as we can tell."

Noel's face fell. "So they don't . . . plot . . . the way the Cocoon fal'Cie did?"

"Actually, not all the Cocoon fal'Cie plotted," Hope clarified. "Most just carried out their directives as well. Only some of them—like Barthandelus—were actively plotting. Though all have the power to make l'Cie."

Noel was quiet. Hope followed his line of sight. He was staring at Titan. "And Titan's purpose?"

"To test all living things in this harshest of worlds. To separate the weak from the strong." Hope remembered the Faultwarrens all too well. "Titan is . . . if evolution were crunched like a black hole into a brutal and living force, tearing apart everything which enters and is too frail to survive, that would be Titan. At the apex of our powers, we survived his Trials long ago, Lightning and the others and I. Barely."

"You made it through something like that and you're worried about an assassination attempt?"

"It was a long time ago, Noel, when I was still a l'Cie and surrounded by my friends. Everything is different now."

Noel remained fixed on Titan. "Is that why you brought me up here? To show him to me?"

"No," Hope said. "Well, sort of. I come here when I want to be reminded of why I am doing all this. Why I have given up my connection to humanity to save humanity." He looked down at the thousands of metal fingers stretching toward a sky that would soon be filled with another Cocoon. They filled this entire vast valley, the skyscrapers filled with over a billion people whom he would never know. "I didn't think that's what I was doing in the earliest days. But as the Academy grew and placed more trust in me just as the populace placed more trust in it, I knew what it was I had to do. Saving Cocoon was just the first act, Noel—and we're barely getting to the third now."

He didn't meet Noel's eyes. "I guess I brought you up here because I wanted you to see this too. I wanted you to see what the future _will_ be like. Not the empty dying lands of your time, but something bright and filled with billions of people alive and dancing and laughing and hurting and loving and doing everything that makes us human. I know you know what we're fighting for. But I wanted you to see it with your own eyes. It helps me, when I grow tired. When at the edges of my thoughts I think I almost remember what being lonely feels like."

Hope turned to leave, but felt Noel's hand on his shoulder holding him in place. The grip wasn't tight, but it had the insistence of the wind in this high place. "You're not alone, Hope. I'm here. I will be here while we stop this assassination. And I will be here until the new Cocoon rises." The hold softened into something more gentle, something Hope had never really felt before. "Hey, let's go inside and figure out how we're going to stop your assassination and what we're having for dinner." Hope turned and caught the edges of Noel's confident grin. "Right now, both are about equally important to me."

"I'm afraid my meals are fairly unexciting." Hope shrugged, but inside it was a cringe—Gods, when had he become so boring?

"I'm sure the Director eats only the best."

Dinner, as it turned out, was a meticulously portioned-out helping of meat substitute, perfectly-cooked vegetables and dark brown bread. This was no surprise for Hope; every meal was a meticulously portioned-out helping of meat substitute, perfectly-cooked vegetables and dark brown bread. He had returned the glass-and-a-half of wine so many times they'd finally stopped bringing it.

"So you eat this every day?"

"Well, the meat substitute is always a different flavor, and they switch up the vegetables. You have to admit, it's quite good."

Noel made a face. "Tastes just like chocobo." Setting down his fork, "Seriously, though—you never want, oh, a flank of grass-fed albino lobo? A giant hunk of chocolate?"

"Occasionally, if I'm feeling particularly wild, I'll send down for a glass of milk."

"I can't tell if you're joking or if I should be very concerned."

Hope smiled. "Of course I'm joking. I don't even like milk very much."

"That's it." Noel stood. Slapping his hand on the wall comlink, he barked, "We need a flan pudding up here immediately. Extra sweet. And send up a dessert wine."

"I can't believe you just did that."

Noel pushed the plates aside and grabbed two wine glasses. "Hope Estheim, I'm your guardian. If you die without eating a flan pudding, I'll never forgive myself."

As good as it was, two hours later, Hope was regretting drinking half a bottle of wine. "The room, Noel. I'm glad it's so empty."

Noel's eye contact was disconcertingly intense, Hope noticed. "Why?"

"Because you can't tell so much if it's spinning if all the walls are exactly the same."

"Oh no. Hope, when's the last time you drank this much?"

"Right now."

"Right. And the time before that?"

Hope sighed theatrically. "There's no time before, Noel. The past isn't fixed and the future hasn't happened yet. There's only this, you know, this endless . . . now."

"Oh, great, you're that kind of drunk."

"What kind?" Hope got up, staggered over to his bed—white, simple, edges tucked in perfectly-and flopped face-up on it. He felt like the bed's perfect opposite—disheveled, colored outside the lines. He kind of liked it. He loosened his tie.

"Never mind." Noel stood over him suddenly, looking down with some concern. "Oh, I shouldn't have done this."

"What do you mean? This is great!" Hope threw his hands in the air and laughed. "I haven't felt so happy—hey, wait, why are you so . . . _normal_?"

"I'm going to assume by 'normal' you mean 'not drunk,' and the answer is: because this isn't my first time drinking, Hope."

"Hey! Who said it was my first time?!"

"Is it?"

Hope wondered if his face looked even redder against the pure white backdrop of bedsheets. "I don't see why that matters."

Noel laughed. "It's nice to see you relax a little, Hope."

"You too. You're so serious all the time. We both are. I mean, I know why. The weight of the world and all that. But it's nice to just forget it for a little while. I never let myself forget. Never. Even in the . . . the thing, the gravity well, I dream about it, or maybe it's not a dream but it's the last thing I think of when the lights go out and the first thing when it's over and I just sometimes feel like it's so much, it's so much that I have to do and I want to do it, I need to, but it's hard and it's lonely and what if I mess up? What if I do something wrong, some tiny little thing and someone, everyone dies because—"

Suddenly, Noel's finger was against his lips. It was warm, and trembling very slightly, which was odd, because Noel was always in control of his body. "Shh. Hope." He was whispering, but Hope could hear every word because he was so close. "You're going to do fine."

"Lie down." Hope tried not to turn redder as he wondered what he was doing. He drew a shuddering breath, feeling Noel's finger still pressed against his lips, open just a little bit, just enough to whisper.

Noel pulled his finger back as if burned. Head snapping up with the desperation of the rejected, Hope saw confusion, then something more resolute in Noel's face. "I should go, Hope. You're drunk and we're both very tired." Noel smiled, but it was a brittle thing. "I'm glad you liked the flan, Hope." Noel walked to the door, dimmed the lights. "Goodnight."

"I'll see you in the morning?" The words came out so small and Hope hated himself for a moment.

Noel turned back, silhouetted against the light from the doorway, but Hope thought he saw a smile. "Of course."

And then Noel was gone, and Hope was in the dark, his tie askew, his boots still on. He fell asleep quickly, quickly, so the burning behind his eyelids was just tiredness, just exhaustion, nothing more.


	4. Chapter 4: Cipher

**Chapter Four: Cipher**

Hope sifted through the morning's data, waving a hand in the air to scroll through updates with more sharpness than was necessary. He felt brittle this morning, and it wasn't just the lingering headache. It was hard to know what to make of the new report from the Intelligence Division. Against his own wishes, when higher-ups got the word about the assassination, Intelligence had taken it upon itself to to scan all transmissions, including private correspondence, from the last several months. When a sizable encrypted file had shown up on his terminal this morning, he knew that they had found something.

Footsteps behind him made Hope swipe downwards abruptly, a cutting motion that wiped the data from the projection. He turned and saw Noel making his way into the chamber. The silence lasted a moment too long, then Noel said, "You're up early."

"I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep." What Hope left out was how he had wallowed in utter embarrassment in the dark for about an hour before a truly punishing workout far above his recommended fitness quota.

If Noel intended on talking about last night, he didn't let on. "Found anything?"

"Yes. Here." Hope pulled up the report. Did Noel really have no intention of saying anything? Truth be told, it's not like Hope wanted to be reminded of what he had done. "Intelligence sifted through several months of communications. They pulled up this. It's a series of transmissions between soldiers here and what seems to be some sort of remote command center near Sulyya Springs."

Noel scanned through the report and whistled softly. "There's . . . a lot here, Hope."

"The long and short of it is that sometime around 270AF, a movement sprung up to end the succession of Interim Directors who held the position in anticipation of my return. They wanted to use the military to depose the Interim Directors, find the gravity well and destroy it, and install a Commander who would rule Academia with the military at his back. The movement still exists, though it is much smaller now—and it looks like they may be the ones planning the assassination attempt."

Noel's mouth narrowed into a grim line. "We've got two days. Let's take them out before they come for you."

"Between you and me, Noel, I can't pretend there isn't some validity to their concerns, if not their solution."

"You're saying you're gonna let them come after you?!

"Of course not. I didn't ask to be made Director, but I'm going to see the new Cocoon project through. It's humanity's only hope. We need to head to Sulyya Springs and see what we can find there. The report doesn't indicate what they're planning to try in two days."

"Right. We don't have much time. Let's go."

Hope shook his head. "I have to alert the commander of my personal squad. They will likely insist on accompanying us to—"

"Hope, are you _insane_?" Noel slammed the doors to the chamber shut, then dashed in front of Hope. "What in the world makes you think that, after uncovering a conspiracy in your guard, that going and telling them you're off to their headquarters is a good idea?" he grated, poking Hope in the chest with a finger.

"I trust them," Hope said simply. "And besides, when we get there, what are we supposed to do? We have no idea how many soldiers there'll be. We'll need the extra firepower."

"Did you forget the part where you saved the world once upon a time?"

Hope's shoulders slumped a little. "That was a long time ago, Noel," he said. "I'm not that boy anymore.

"So you can't use magic anymore. You're still pretty damn good with that boomerang, Hope. We'll be fine." Noel had lost none of his intensity. "More importantly, you cannot trust them. These are not the soldiers you knew in 13AF. Almost four hundred years of political machinations have gone on since you last checked in, and who knows how much you're not fully aware of? Who knows how deep this goes? After we get answers, you can bring them back into the fold. But not until then."

Hope let the silence spool out for a moment. "I'll need to grab a few things." He headed for the door. "Meet me here in fifteen minutes. I know the plans for this building—and I know a secret way out."

Noel grinned. "If we do this right, we'll be back before they even miss us."

Hope didn't mention to Noel that he planned to take a quick detour.

It wasn't far to Alyssa's cell. When he arrived, she was catatonic, an IV in her forearm. This was not how she should spend her last days.

A screen winked into existence against the glass. "Good morning, Director. The subject is sedated for her own safety and well-being. When she is conscious, she suffers from psychosis and delusion, leading to self-harm."

"Thank you, doctor," Hope said, his voice suddenly hoarse. "When was she last fully conscious?"

"A few hours after your visit yesterday. We tried putting her on antipsychotics, but she refuses anything that isn't forced."

"How is she delusional?" Hope feared he already knew the answer, but he had to be sure.

The doctor flipped through a few charts. "She screams about being dead. Insists that she . . . let's see here . . . that she's a 'paradox' and that she doesn't belong here, and then she tries to grab anything she can and hurt herself. We can provide audio, if you wish, Director."

Hope winced. "That will be unnecessary. Thank you, doctor." He started to wipe away the screen, but then stopped. "Tell me, doctor . . . does she dream?"

"The sedation is too deep to allow for dreaming, sir."

Hope was silent. He could not get rid of the crushing sense of wrongness, that keeping her imprisoned on what were likely the last days and hours of her life was far greater punishment than anyone should fear to bear. But what could he do? Director he was, but he would be no dictator, and releasing Alyssa would undo the underpinnings of justice that held Academia together.

Still, it was difficult not to order the doctor out and free Alyssa himself. It would have been harder still if she were conscious, if she were able to give voice to her plight.

"Director, perhaps this is overstepping my station," the doctor said, "but in a moment of clarity, she did want to convey one last message to you. She asked that you forgive her for what she has done."

A gut punch. Wordlessly, he waved his hand and the screen dissolved. He did not need the doctor to see what came next. She looked so harmless, a victim really, lying thin and unconscious beneath the sheet. The doctors knew no better—they assumed she would stand trial—but Hope did. Serah and Snow would resolve the paradoxes. She would never wake again.

He had lingered too long; surely Noel would begin wondering where he was if he stayed. Before he turned, though, he put hand to glass, as if she would feel it, as if he could make her stay. "I forgive you, Alyssa," Hope said, "and whatever happens, I promise I won't forget."

It was no great lie when Hope sent a missive to his staff claiming to feel ill. There wasn't much worth taking in his quarters. Only one thing, really. He clasped the band of the manadrive around his wrist, where his l'Cie brand had once been. It felt heavy, like a manacle. Hope ghosted down a narrow service corridor and through a side door into the chamber where the massive hologram of Cocoon hovered silently overhead. Noel waited there, weapons and rucksack at his side. "I'm ready," Hope said. "Let's go."


End file.
